sábado, noviembre 09, 2013

Who do you sue if you’re hit by a satellite?
A defunct satellite from the European Space Agency the size of a Chevy Suburban is set to plunge to Earth somewhere between Sunday night and Monday afternoon -- and experts say there's no way to precisely determine where it will crash.
GOCE, or Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer, ran out of gas last month and has been steadily sinking towards the Earth. As the planet rotates, the satellite whizzes over nearly every point on Earth. Experts expect it to plunge harmlessly into the oceans that cover 70 percent of the surface of the planet. But what if it doesn’t? What if it takes out your old Accord?

Making Odds

Gambling houses will take bets on more or less anything. Here's the odds (as of Saturday morning) on the GOCE satellite crashing down on different continents, British gaming company Ladbrokes told FoxNews.com.
North and South America: 6/4
Russia and Asia: 2/1
Africa: 4/1
Europe: 5/1
Australia: 10/1
Bets are void if it lands in the sea, the company noted

“Basically, governments are responsible for their own spacecraft,” explained Marcia S. Smith, president of the Space and Technology Policy Group in Arlington, Va. “[If] you could prove a piece of GOCE hit your Honda, you could go to your government to make a claim,” she told FoxNews.com.WHERE IS IT NOW? Track the GOCE satellite here
But don’t put the ESA’s lawyer on speed dial just yet. Most of the fragments of the satellite are likely to burn up on re-entry, said Heiner Klinkrad, Head of ESA’s Space Debris Office according to an ESA blog.
“Most of these fragments will completely burn up. A small fraction of the initial spacecraft mass -- about 20 percent or 200 kilograms [440 pounds] -- is expected to reach ground, distributed across dozens of fragments, spread over a sizable re-entry ground swath.”
400 pounds of smoking metal spread over a "sizeable swath" is nothing to sniff at. But should one of those fragments land on U.S. soil, you’re fully covered, according to the United Nations. The U.N.’s Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects was created in September of 1972, and has been ratified by 88 countries and signed by 22 nations as of January 1, 2013.
“A launching State shall be absolutely liable to pay compensation for damage caused by its space object on the surface of the Earth or to aircraft in flight,” reads the policy. And the GOCE satellite was launched from Russia, so that country would be responsible, said Mark Hopkins chairman of the executive committee of the National Space Society.
While space objects reenter the atmosphere all the time, few pieces survive the fiery trip and many of those end up in the ocean, Smith said. But sometimes, they do. Russia's Cosmos 954 satellite crashed in Canada in 1978, with a radioactive energy source. That sounds more alarming than it actually was; the element was “vanishingly small” when it hit ground, Hopkins said. But Canada did try to get money back from the Russians -- and they did pay up, he said.
“It was a lot less than they wanted,” he told FoxNews.com.
Indeed, the Canadian government asked for $6 million to cover cleanup and "future unpredicted expenses," according to Matthew Kleinman's "The Little Book of Space Law." Russia paid half that. It's up to a government to bring charges, according to the policy book.
"Had a Canadian citizen been injured by the Cosmos 954 debris, his only recourse would have been to either convince the Canadian government to bring a claim against the Soviet Union on his behalf or bring a claim on his own behalf in a national court with appropriate jurisdiction. If he won his case, he would then have had to hope that the Soviet government honored the court's judgment," the book notes.
So if you hear a crash in the night, rest assured that the responsible party will most likely pick up the tab. Just make sure to take a picture.

Unexplained satellite movements in orbit, secretive payloads, testing of potential anti-satellite technologies and no official explanation — this sounds like the plot of the next James Bond adventure. But this is no 007 movie, this is the storyline of several Chinese satellites that are raising eyebrows in the West.

The speculation is focused on the satellites Shiyan-7, Chuangxin-3 and Shijian-15, all of which were launched on the same Long March 4C (CZ-4C) rocket on July 20 (pictured top).

The official word was that the trio carried science payloads. Nothing too strange with that. But then Shiyan-7 (also known as SY-7, or Experiment 7) recently carried out a series of maneuvers with Chuangxin-3 (CX-3) only for it to make a sudden course change to rendezvous with an older satellite, Shijian 7 (SJ-7, Practice 7), which was launched in 2005.

At launch, one of the newest satellites was thought to be equipped with a robotic arm manipulator (although, at the time, space analysts did not know which one) and at the time the Chinese language press specifically mentioned “space debris observation,” “mechanical arm operations” and the testing of “space maintenance technologies,” according to Gregory Kulacki, a senior analyst and China project manager within the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists’ Global Security Program.

At face value, this could indicate that China is working on peaceful space debris mitigation technologies. Perhaps the odd maneuvers of Shiyan-7 reveal the development of techniques of orbital debris retrieval? Worryingly, there’s also a flip side to this coin.

“Since space systems are largely dual use, it should not be surprising that there would be interest in the ability to maneuver satellites in close proximity … but neither should there be blithe assumptions that this is necessarily for solely peaceful ends,” Dean Cheng, a research fellow on Chinese political and security affairs at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., told SPACE.com.

In 2007, China made its military capabilities in space abundantly clear. The nation launched an anti-satellite missile that intercepted one of its own satellites. This orbital target practice not only proved that satellites in low-Earth orbit are not safe from surface attack, the action generated around 3,000 pieces of extra space junk in a heavily used altitude — an act that drew heavy international condemnation. The debris from the intercept persist to this day.

Space is the ultimate “high ground” in military strategy, so China’s provocative act obviously generated a huge amount of concern and no doubt motivated the U.S. to test its own anti-satellite missile on the defunct spy satellite USA-193 in 2008. As the satellite’s orbit was degrading, that successful satellite intercept did not produce the orbital debris that the Chinese test did. Though the official line was that USA-193 needed to be taken out due to the hazardous fuel on board, the strike was an obvious reply to the Chinese test a year earlier.

So are these most recent strange satellite maneuvers another development in anti-satellite capabilities? If so, the US and China will need to make a decision. Do both powers pursue anti-satellite technologies or do they find a way to cooperate in space like the US and Russia did toward the end of the Cold War?

“Major powers can ramp up a competition to damage satellites, or they can arrive at tacit agreements to dampen this competition,” said Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Washington, D.C.-based Stimson Center and director of its South Asia and Space Security programs. “The United States and the Soviet Union chose wisely. China has yet to choose.”

A target in Maryland. (Photo: Google Earth/ Center for Land Use Interpretation)

They’re aerial photo calibration targets, most of which were put in their current locations in the 1950s and 60s by the Air Force and NASA and some are still in use today.

Here’s more about the targets:

The targets function like an eye chart at the optometrist, where the smallest group of bars that can be resolved marks the limit of the resolution for the optical instrument that is being used. For aerial photography, it provides a platform to test, calibrate, and focus aerial cameras traveling at different speeds and altitudes. The targets can also be used in the same way by satellites.

Eglin Air Force Base, Florida (Photo: Google Earth/ Center for Land Use Interpretation)

The Center for Land Use Interpretation reported the largest concentration of the barcode targets — 15 in a 20 mile range — falls within Edwards Air Force Base.

Edwards Air Force Base (Photo: Google Earth/ Center for Land Use Interpretation)

“There is some variation in the size and shape of the targets at Edwards, suggesting updates and modifications for specific programs,” the report stated. “A number of the targets there also have aircraft hulks next to them, added to provide additional, realistic subjects for testing cameras. Some of these planes are themselves unusual and rare military jets, officially in the collection of the base museum, despite being left out on the range.”

The ones in the Mojave desert, the report stated, have been used to calibrate A12, SR-71 and U-2 planes. Drones also could use these targets to calibrate their surveillance cameras and sensors.

Most of the targets, CLUI stated are on concrete or asphalt consisting of black and white paint in a 78 foot by 53 foot pattern of parallel and perpendicular bars at different sizes.

The CLUI stated that it picked out images of the barcode-like calibration targets from The Art of Citizen Space Exploration, which is running at the University of California Riverside Sweeney Art Gallery from January 19 to May 18.

In June, the defense minister said Iran's new space center, named Imam Khomeini Space Center, would be launched in the future and the Iranian scientists and experts from the Aerospace Industry Organization of the Defense Ministry would send into orbit new generation of the Islamic republic's satellites from the center.

Iran Space Agency (ISA) has announced that it will unveil a new home-made satellite in February, Tehran Times daily reported on Sunday.
Director of ISA, Hamid Fazeli, said Saturday that a new domestically-manufactured satellite, named the Nahid, will be unveiled on Feb. 2, 2013, which is Iran's National Space Technology Day, according to the report.
"The project to complete the satellite is going well, and we hope that the satellite will be unveiled on National Space Technology Day," Fazeli said, adding that it is more likely that Fajr (Dawn) and Sharifsat satellites will be sent into space by the end of the current Iranian calendar year, which ends on March 20.
The Iranian official did not elaborate on the technology and mission of the Iranian satellites.
According to the report, the Fajr is the first Iranian satellite that will be put into orbit. It is a reconnaissance satellite powered by solar energy.
On Wednesday, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said that Iran was to unveil new space achievements soon.
Vahidi told reporters that the unveiling ceremony would take place on Feb. 2, Iran's National Space Technology Day.
In June, the defense minister said Iran's new space center, named Imam Khomeini Space Center, would be launched in the future and the Iranian scientists and experts from the Aerospace Industry Organization of the Defense Ministry would send into orbit new generation of the Islamic republic's satellites from the center.
As the first step, Vahidi said, the Dawn satellite would be launched into orbit from the Imam Khomeini Space Center.
Iran, a founding member of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, launched its first domestically-made data-processing satellite, the Omid (Hope), into space in 2009.
Iran frequently says that it will push ahead with its space program in the coming years.

jueves, diciembre 13, 2012

ciagovThis video was made by the National Reconnaissance Office for the
declassification ceremony for CORONA, held on May 25, 1995. Video from
the booklet "CIA Analysis of the Warsaw Pact Forces: The Importance of
Clandestine Reporting."

viernes, noviembre 11, 2011

Things are looking grim for the Russian space agency’s Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars, with experts in the space industry calling the probability of rescue nearly zero.

The spacecraft has been stranded in low-Earth orbit following an engine failure almost immediately after launch on Nov. 8. Efforts to contact the probe have proved futile and the Pentagon’s NORAD has reportedly projected that the vehicle will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere on Nov. 26, the day after NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory is scheduled to launch. (Wired was unable to confirm this date with NORAD due to the federal holiday.)

The spacecraft is currently in a decaying orbit around Earth that should allow it to remain in space for at least a few weeks. During this time, Russian engineers will continue trying to contact the probe, hoping for a miracle.

In the event that no contact is established, the probe will soon fall back to Earth. The probable fall zone is currently very large — between 51.4 degrees N latitude and 51.4 degrees S latitude, which includes most of the U.S., part of Europe, all of Africa and Australia and virtually all of South America and Asia — and could prove dangerous if the spacecraft were to come down over a populated area.

While most of the 15-ton vehicle is expected to burn up in the atmosphere, its size and mass suggests that some debris would reach the Earth’s surface.

"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother" - Albert Einstein

"It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office" - H. L. Menken

"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented" -Elie Wiesel

"Stay hungry, stay foolish" - Steve Jobs

"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert , in five years ther'ed be a shortage of sand" - Milton Friedman

"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less" - Vaclav Havel